Daily Times

It is convincing enough to assume that there exists the post-American Middle East, which has created a power — geo-political — vacuum to entice Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey to compete with the dwindling influence of the US there. The battle for Syria is one such example where external forces are contending to dictate their terms. This is the central idea of Christopher Phillips’ book, “The battle for Syria: International rivalry in the new Middle East”, which was published by the Yale University Press in 2016. Phillips is a senior lecturer in the International Relations of the Middle East at Queen Mary, University of London, as well as an associate fellow at Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. This opinion piece intends to discuss certain ideas of Phillips , which were expressed in the book.

In the post-Cold war era, Syria has been enjoying an interesting combination of dynasty and socialism for a while. Being led by President Bashar al-Assad, who belongs to Shia Alawi minority tribe (12 percent of the population), the administration is ruling over a Sunni Arab majority (65 percent). After December 17, 2010, when Mohamed Bouazizi immolated himself in Tunisia and sparked the Arab Spring of awakening, Deraa was the first Syrian city where anti-Assad slogans were heard from teenagers in early March 2011. The latent period of two and a half months was enough to let the Syrian regime brace the challenge.

On page 48, Phillips writes, “[I]t is quite possible that Syrians would have remained largely passive were it not for the trigger of the Arab Spring, which served as both an inspiration and a guide…Technology helped facilitate protest… It took days and weeks for Syrians and the world to learn about the Hama massacre in [February] 1982 [to quell the revolt of the Muslim Brotherhood], but in 2011 technology [e.g. internet, satellite television, Smartphone, social media and al-Jazeera] allowed instant information.”

Here, whereas Phillips says that the presence or absence of technology to spread information makes a difference between the reaction of people to incidents in 1982 and 2011, he does not mention the significance of the authenticity of information to be spread through technology. Ironically, Phillips does not value the role of Wikileaks in giving people access to the raw truth — and not disinformation — spread through the prevailing technology in Tunisia, which had lead to the Arab Spring in 2011. In the bibliography section, only one reference about Wikileaks — and that is related to “Ankara’s new foreign policy” — is found on page 288. Perhaps, Phillips does not appreciate that more than technology, the difference lies between the legitimacy of information being bandied about, and how this revelation of information through Wikileaks became an immediate reason behind the making of the Arab Spring.

Phillips differentiates between the uprising and the civil war in Syria but considers 2011 as an important year in both cases. From page 50 to 57, Phillips comments on the uprising. He explicates two main pre-emptive modes of appeasement adopted by the Assad regime to keep Syrians away from toppling it through any uprising be it in the name of the Arab Spring; unlike Iraq, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

The first mode is contingent on five buy-ins that include offering economic benefits to the Sunni merchant and middle class; extending patronage to important tribes; launching propaganda to depict Bashar al-Assad as a reformer; avowing secularism of the regime to offer solace to secular Sunnis against Islamism and Jihadism; keeping Sunni-Alawi (Shia) tensions lower; and resorting to the appeal of stability be valued by the masses. The second mode is resorting to two coup-proofing strategies — avoiding army’s defection by buying its loyalty, and resorting to spying (or “Mukhabarat” which were 15 agencies by 2011) on the regime, general population and each other. Moreover, the Assad regime protected itself by not only resorting to selective — and not wide-spread — violence against protestors through security forces and Alawi pro-Assad non-state actors, such as Shabiha, but also by following a reconciliatory policy towards Kurds.

The Assad regime has come into the grip of two major limitations. First, the UNSC Resolution 1973 that mandated NATO to “intervene to protect anti-regime demonstrators that Gaddafi had threatened to crush” on March 17, 2011, which deters Assad from using brute force against protestors — to avoid any international intervention, as mentioned on page 56. Secondly, the caution given to Syria by the US President, Barack Obama, on August 20, 2012, over crossing the red line of deploying chemical weapons against rebels, which further closes the option of suppressing rebels, as mentioned on page 175. Hence, while the measures taken by the Assad regime has enabled it to survive the uprising, the limitations imposed from outside have made it surrender Syria to a civil war.

On page 196, Phillips writes, “Seeing advantage when the Syrian uprising turned into a civil war [by December 2011] … It eventually acquired sufficient supporters and territory inside Syria to rename itself the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in April 2013”.

This paragraph shows that while Syria was descending into a civil war in December 2011, the US forces were withdrawing from Iraq as per the 2008 electoral pledge made by the US President Barack Obama. This is the point in time that Phillips considers to have given an impression of perceived decline of the US power in the Middle East, which consequently shapes a new geopolitical order in the region. Here, Phillips forgets to mention the significance of the Status of Forces Agreement between Iraq and the US signed in 2008 (and expired on December 31, 2011), which the government of Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had refused to extend due to domestic political opposition. The extension could have afforded the US some leeway to station a residual (combat) force in Iraq to counter any immediate threat, as the US and NATO had signed similar agreements with Afghanistan in December 2014 for another ten years.

If the Eisenhower doctrine (January 05, 1957) and the Carter doctrine (January 23, 1980) were of any guidance, the assumption of post-American Middle East would be a fallacy. Similarly, if the Clinton doctrine (February 26, 1999) was of any guidance, the US planes would probably soon hit targets in the troubled spots in Syria. Neither is there any dwindling of the US influence in the Middle East nor is there any new Middle East in the making. Nevertheless, the Afghanistan model can still be created in Syria by persuading the Assad regime to introduce reforms to make the government as representative as possible to let pro-democratic Syrians back into the democratic process. The Syrian rebels of all hues can be treated as the Taliban and al-Qaeda were dealt within Afghanistan.

The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at qaisarrashid@yahoo.com